About

The Book of Contemporary Magical Things

£12,002

pledged of £3,000 goal

543

backers

The Book's Cover

The Book of Contemporary Magical Things is 100 pages of modern, seemingly mundane, items that are imbued with magical power. Some are quite minor; A tuning fork that will quiet a room, a pair of cuff links that tell you the name and family details of those with whom you shake hands, a set of polyhedral dice that temporarily change the fortune of the roller, but some are spectacular, or dangerously malevolent. From minor items to Earth shattering forces, these items are there for you to use as a Gamesmaster in your modern, horror, or superhero campaigns.

Organised into a pyramid format, the items vary in power from many slight and seemingly harmless effects to a few artifacts of great power, so dangerous that mere mortals should not be in possession of them.

The sections are arranged using thaumaturgical grades so you can easily find your way to an item that reflects the level of your campaign.

The sections are entirely systemless so you can alter them to fit in with your rules or setting to your hearts content. Each entry has an image of the item, its benefits will be highlighted in green, its dangers in red, and its current location in blue, enabling you to pick up what you need from the entry at a moment's notice.

The books text is already complete. All of the art is currently in house. All we need, and what we're raising the funds for, is a layout artist to add their magic. We'd also like to get some better art too.

An example from the 'Minora' section (image above)'The Blindfold of the
Condemned Man'

What first appears to be just a raggedy piece of dirty
white cloth is actually a blindfold used by a Communist
firing squad in the Hungarian Uprising of 1956.
It gained the ability to make sure those about to be
executed to know exactly where the shot was coming
from even though they were blind.
When worn in combat, the blindfold makes the
wearer completely blind but conveys a sixth sense
regarding exactly where his enemies are. It conveys a
50% bonus to all gun skills and removes any penalties
from using two weapons. Someone wearing this
blindfold could walk into a bar of his enemies
(or, more accurately, be led in) and kill many of them
before they had a chance to go for their weapons.
In summary, someone with the blindfold gets a 50% increase to hit, always gets
to shoot first and gets an extra attack providing reloads aren't necessary. This
effect is only applicable to firearms.
Being blind though, the wearer is more susceptible to being hit in return if there is more than one assailant (+50% likelihood of being hit).

Darren Pearce - AuthorDarren W. Pearce is a British fantasy and sci-fi author, game designer, and has worked with the likes of Joe Dever, Cubicle 7, and is the lead writer on the Shaintar setting designed by Sean Patrick Fannon.
He’s one of the Savage Mojo Family and wrote the Set Rising setting for Suzerain. He’s also a regular at the UK Games Expo. His work on the Core Box 11 for the Doctor Who RPG won him a Gold Ennie in 2013. He won an Epic E-Book Award 2011 (Best Anthology) for his anthology work on Bad A$$ Faeries 3.

We have some experience, both of Kickstarters and in the gaming industry and are used to bringing the very best of our work to its audience. We are very confident we can turn this book out for you.

We'll be having very few of these as more stretch goals tends to delay projects somewhat and we're hoping to turn this around quite quickly for you.

I already have the basics of the world map which we can add to the book and will detail the locations of all those artifacts, or magical things, whose whereabouts are currently known. Of course, you can change these locations or use the map to add more if you wish. The other stretch goals can be accomplished quite quickly should we reach them.

Risks and challenges

With all prospective projects there is a risk, but we're good at keeping our backers informed of any delays and the book is complete apart from some very minor work.